14
REVIEW
ment to adopt these people. There are already an estimated 750,000 people squatting in various parts of Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and the New Territories and several hundred thousand are still waiting in the queue for better public housing. In a city full to bursting, the refugees from Vietnam will remain a burden until the last one is cleared.
The massive influx of people, however, highlights a conundrum for Hong Kong. For while it is creating a severe problem at the human level, and tending to dilute the earning power of the Hong Kong worker by lowering wage levels, the same liberal policies which give rise to it have also added a significant new dimension to Hong Kong's economy. The China dimension is itself multi-faceted and both invites investment from Hong Kong and channels investment to it. Major property acquisitions by Chinese mainland groups have brought widespread benefits to Hong Kong. New rail and transport links have been forged, new co-operative agreements established, new trade developed and new initiatives in ship maintenance, containerisation, exports and re-exports and real estate development hold great hopes for the future.
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Hong Kong's relations with Guangdong have never been better and if the more distant future still appears obscure and clouded, the strides made and the new developments noted in such diverse fields as water supply, electricity generation and distribution, trade and transport, give hope that in time the more fundamental question of the status of the New Territories will be positively resolved in the interests of Guangdong and China, as much as of Hong Kong itself. In the meantime, Hong Kong's economy could be further diversified by the servicing of China's off-shore oil industry, with wells reported in the neigh- bouring Pearl River estuary, and by the building of an oil refinery, once considered in the early 1970s before the international oil crisis. It is difficult therefore to be gloomy about the short-term future.
Choosing the Road Ahead
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It would be all too easy to put Hong Kong's many successes in the past decade down to good luck though certainly it has had that in abundance. The change in circumstances in China is clearly a consequence of policies shaped and decisions taken far from our borders, though it is fair to suggest that the lessons of Hong Kong's prosperity did not pass unnoticed in Peking. Great credit must be given to the people of Hong Kong whose labour and exertions have earned them increasing wealth and an improved way of life. But together with a higher quality of life comes the need for a better quality of leadership and a more responsive administration.
The 1970s have been dubbed the MacLehose years; the experience that a new-style Governor brought from a lifetime spent in diplomacy, including several years in China and as Political Adviser in Hong Kong, and at Westminster, stood him in good stead. Sir Murray has received able and dedicated support from his colleagues in the government, especially valuable being the guidance of the economy by the Financial Secretary. A hard-working team of Unofficials in the Legislative Council has complemented a generally strong administration.
There is no mystery about the Hong Kong system, based as it is on giving as free a play as possible to market forces, and non-intervention. The government has attempted over the years to foster change only where it is evidently needed. The experiments with the 'Fight Crime' and 'Clean Hong Kong' campaigns which in turn gave rise to increased public participation at the community level, has in recent times focused on the need to reorganise district administration. And at the year's end, a White Paper outlining changes in a system of elected district boards was in the offing.